The first to be put into operation was the particle collider, which Li Qingsong valued most and was the most important equipment for overcoming the unified field theory.
Dozens of manned ferry ships left the residential spacecraft, transporting numerous clones and blueprint scientists to the 30-kilometer-long bamboo-shaped spacecraft, along with fusion fuel, experimental materials, and more.
The large-scale nuclear fusion power station began operating again, and the surging electricity was transmitted to the particle collider, converting electrical energy into kinetic energy through electromagnetic effects and applying it to extremely tiny protons.
Although there were many energy losses in this process, the energy ultimately applied to the proton beam was still considerable, given the millions of kilowatts of installed capacity provided by the nuclear fusion power station.
And how much mass does a proton have?
The huge energy, combined with the extremely low mass of the proton, naturally resulted in extremely high speeds.
They were instantly accelerated to speeds very close to the speed of light, traveling from one end of the particle collider to the other in just about one ten-thousandth of a second, and then violently bombarded a specially made target.
At that moment, many particles were knocked out.
Some of these particles originally existed inside the proton, but more of them did not exist at all.
In the microscopic world, mass is not conserved. Particles can be created from energy out of thin air, or mass can be converted into energy and dissipate out of thin air.
These particles usually exist for only a very short time, instantly transforming into other particles.
But it doesn't matter. The high-sensitivity observation equipment installed in the particle collider will record all these intermediate particles, which may only exist for one hundred millionth of a second, and completely record all their changes.
From this, Li Qingsong can explore the physical laws behind these changes.
Particularly peculiar is that under such violent collisions, even protons and neutrons sometimes "melt," and their internal quarks and the gluons that transmit the strong nuclear force are released, forming a peculiar "quark-gluon plasma" with properties similar to a fluid.
In this quark-gluon plasma, the strong nuclear force exhibits properties that are completely different from those at room temperature. Studying the changes in the properties of this strong nuclear force is obviously very helpful in exploring its essence, and then unifying it with the electromagnetic force and the weak nuclear force.
However, it is certainly impossible to do so at this stage. All the research Li Qingsong is conducting now is just for scientific reserves.
If unifying the strong nuclear force is compared to the college entrance examination, then the collision experiments Li Qingsong is conducting now are like studying junior high school or even elementary school courses, accumulating lower-level knowledge bit by bit, and only then is it possible to pass the college entrance examination.
Proton collisions are only one type of particle collider experiment. In other particle colliders, Li Qingsong is also conducting collisions of many particles such as heavy ions, neutrons, positive and negative electrons, etc. The collision forms are also varied, including setting targets for collision, colliding two beams of particles, accelerating in a ring, accelerating many times until the speed is very close to the speed of light before colliding, and directly colliding.
Regarding the array telescope, Li Qingsong released tens of thousands of large telescopes to the outside of the fleet, allowing them to float autonomously in space, maintaining the same speed and heading as the main fleet while forming an array to obtain an unimaginably large aperture, and then conducting research on deep-space celestial bodies.
The evolution time of stars, nebulae, galaxies, and even large-scale cosmic structures such as star clusters, galaxy clusters, superclusters, and cosmic filaments is usually calculated in units of billions of years.
It is obviously not feasible to guard a star or a galaxy and wait for it to slowly evolve and then explore the principles behind this evolution.
But fortunately, the universe is large enough, and there are enough celestial bodies. And since there are many celestial bodies, they must include every star, galaxy, star cluster, and other structure in all stages of life.
It is like a specimen. By observing them, one can have a panoramic view of all the evolutionary stages of the universe from its birth to the present.
Light travels at the speed of light, transmitting one light-year in one year.
The total age of the universe is about billion years. Therefore, if Li Qingsong wants to study the state of celestial bodies when the universe was just born billion years ago, he only needs to observe celestial bodies about billion light-years away.
Because the light emitted from celestial bodies billion light-years away takes about billion years to reach Li Qingsong's fleet.
Thus, what Li Qingsong sees now is what they were about billion years ago.
Of course, there is a problem, which is that their distance is too far, and the light is too weak.
This requires improving the performance of the telescope and increasing the aperture of the telescope to see them.
Fortunately, Li Qingsong's array telescope technology is advanced enough, and the number of large and even giant telescopes it carries is large enough to barely see them, and then conduct research on them to obtain early-stage information about the universe.
Gravitational wave telescopes have also begun to work.
Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime. When a gravitational wave passes, the size of an object will change slightly.
For example, the two detection arms of a gravitational wave. When a gravitational wave passes, one of its detection arms will shorten and the other will lengthen.
This change occurs in every object. Spaceships, warships, and even planets and stars will all undergo this change.
But this change is too small, and only gravitational wave detectors can detect it.
Because in the detection arm of a gravitational wave detector, a beam of laser is constantly reflected back and forth.
The arm length of Li Qingsong's gravitational wave detector is 15 kilometers, and the laser will travel back and forth 10,000 times each time it detects, so the total length is equivalent to 300,000 kilometers.
Assume that the change in the arm length of the gravitational wave detector caused by a gravitational wave event is one ten-thousandth of a proton radius, which is too small to be observed.
Then, if the laser travels back and forth 10,000 times, it is equivalent to magnifying this change by 10,000 times, reaching the radius of 1 proton, which can be sensed by high-precision equipment.
Thus, the gravitational wave detector can explore the phenomenon behind this gravitational wave event through the sensed changes, and even find the optical counterpart that caused this change, and then directly detect it through an optical telescope to obtain more information.
Li Qingsong also has many of these gravitational wave detectors, and they have all entered full-power detection mode, collecting gravitational wave event information from the depths of the universe through various methods and means.
